


Dreams Of Wolves

by FictionPenned



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28083333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: Arya dreams of wolves.On many such occasions, she is, herself, a wolf. Snow and leaves and ice crack beneath her paws and she races through forests that she has never seen before with her pack at her back and a fierce desire to hunt and explore and survive racing through her blood.In these dreams the world shifts, her perspective changes, and she feels not as if she is no longer herself, but as if she has connected with some deeply buried, heretofore unknown aspect of her being. She is both herself and something more. Something greater. Something other.Written for the Books of Yule Exchange 2020.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8
Collections: Books of Yule





	Dreams Of Wolves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [facethestrange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/facethestrange/gifts).



Arya dreams of wolves. 

On many such occasions, she is, herself, a wolf. Snow and leaves and ice crack beneath her paws and she races through forests that she has never seen before with her pack at her back and a fierce desire to hunt and explore and survive racing through her blood. 

In these dreams the world shifts, her perspective changes, and she feels not as if she is no longer herself, but as if she has connected with some deeply buried, heretofore unknown aspect of her being. She is both herself and something more. Something greater. Something other. 

Direwolves have long been the sigil of House Stark. As a young child in Winterfell, Arya would sometimes find herself staring up at the grey banners that lined the halls and marked their armies, counting teeth and mirroring the creature's ferocious expression, wishing that people might one day consider her to be just as fear-inducing and awe-inspiring as the wolf that bears her name. She was tired of being a little girl, and she thought that she might one day become a knight, acting in the service of a noble and just ruler. 

Now, however, Arya doesn't really know what she wants. Her mind is full of rage and grief and anger, her eyes are clouded with memories of flashing blades and severed heads and blood splashing in every direction, her tongue is etched with a list the many people who she has marked for death, and her dreams run wild with impressions of wolves. 

Sometimes when the nights are long and cold and unforgiving -- when hunger claws at her insides, threatening to devour her alive -- the wolf in her dreams will stalk a stag, taking it down with a predator's elegant prowess and ripping through its hide with teeth that are as sharp and wicked as daggers. After those dreams, Arya will wake with the metallic taste of blood in her mouth and a feeling of fullness in her belly. 

On the days when she feels the most lost and alone -- like the hollow impression of a girl wandering across the continent with only the vaguest sense of a destination -- her dreams are full of the press of other wolves against her body as they huddle together to keep out the cold. On those mornings, her nose is filled with the smell of damp and musty fur. It's a good smell, and if she ever spoke of her dreams aloud, Arya would dare to say that she likes those nights the best. 

They are the nights that remind her of warm hugs from both her brothers' and her father's, of burying her face in the fox pelts that line their shoulders. She thinks that if she ever gets the chance to hug a member of her family again, she might never let them go. The dreams also remind her of her goodbye to Jon, of evenings spent huddled around roaring hearths with her hands tightly clasped around a bowl of stew, and of placing her tiny palm flat against the walls of her home and feeling the warm water of the hot springs race through the walls. 

Those nights are full of love and longing, and when she wakes, the world feels at once both more beautiful and more broken. Arya doesn't know if there will ever be days like those again, if she will ever be able to return to her home in Winterfell, if she will ever again be greeted with broad, kind smiles and arms flung wide in welcome, but she wants that possible future more than she wants anything else in the world, except, perhaps, revenge. 

The two desires are polar opposite, and difficult to reconcile, and Arya knows that full well. However, where home and family often feels like a far-flung, unattainable, impossible hope, revenge feels both real and immediate. It feels like the only thing that exists firmly within her control. If she only continues to perfect her bladework and her fighting, if she only keeps her list of names fresh and ready in her mind, if she only envisions each and every possible contingency and forms her schemes accordingly, then she sees no season why she will not be able to exact revenge on the many people who wronged her, to spill bright blood against the snow, to avenge the people who she has lost. 

She is obsessed with these thoughts, and in the absence of both any real hope or meaningful company, obsession is all she has. 

She thinks of herself as a shadowy figure floating across the world, unseen until the very moment that she leaps out of the darkness with her teeth gritted and the cruel steel of her sword bared and strikes down her enemies. Though she has been denied her pack, she can still channel the spirit of the wolf that she sought to imitate for so long. 

She forgets that, at their hearts, wolves are not vicious animals. She forgets the many days of relative peace that she spent with Nymeria at her side, about how the young direwolves rarely growled and almost never snapped. In her pain, Arya's memories are fully consumed by one memory, and that is the memory of watching Nymeria sink her teeth into Joffrey's hand as she sought to protect her.

Arya has nothing and no one left to protect except for ghosts and her own honor, but in her current, ravaged desperation, her quest for revenge feels no less worthwhile, no less justifiable, no less courageous for it. 

Except, perhaps, for those dreams in which she locks eyes with another wolf, seeing the moon and her wolfish self reflected back at her. 

She never knows what the other wolf's gaze means, does not know how to decode the many intricacies of canine expression, but it always floods her mind with memories of the moments in which she disappointed the people around her, and she found herself faced with a lecture about heroes and history and the importance of doing the right and honorable thing. 

She always wakes from those dreams with tears shimmering on her cheeks and pooling in the corners of her eyes, but those tears do not stop her from rolling up her bedding, stomping our her fire, and moving on with her sword in her hip, a list of names on her lips, and fire in her eyes. 

Dreams are just illusions, after all. 

They cannot fill her belly or help her find companionship or disapprove of her actions, and she will not allow herself to be dissuaded by fictions. 

She is Arya Stark. 

She is a force to be reckoned with. 

And she has work to do. 


End file.
